Q&A

My wife and I got married recently. We both have separate cars and separate insurance companies. We also have listed each other as excluded in our respective policies. Does that mean my insurance will not cover me if I drive her car and vice versa?

A

Congratulations on the recent nuptials. Typically when the husband and wife first are married they do have separate car insurance policies but then come together to combine and share one auto insurance policy which is normally cheaper than carrying 2 policies. Sometimes one spouse may have a bad driving record or there are other issues so they do keep separate policies, which tends to make them pay a bit more than one multi-car policy with the same insurer.

If you and your spouse have decided to continue to each carry your own insurance policies on your vehicles and you have excluded each other from your policies than yes, that means you each will not be covered if you drive the other person's vehicle.

Excluding a driver means that named driver exclusion portion of the policy will allow the insurance company to deny a claim if the excluded party is in an accident with the vehicle, even if they are driving it due to an emergency situation. No coverage is extended to the excluded driver typically. So if you and your spouse do plan to drive each other's cars from time to time than you can still keep separate policies but will need to take the exclusions off and thus add each other to your own policies as drivers.

As we mentioned earlier, typically it is cheaper once you are married and need car insurance together to combine your policies and put all of your vehicles on one policy and have each other listed on the policy as the policyholders and drivers. By keeping separate policies you are likely paying higher rates and by excluding each other from the policies it means you cannot drive your spouse's car nor can she driver your vehicle since car insurance coverages are not extended to either or you on the other's car thus you each would be considered uninsured motorists if you drove the other's car.

You can get instant car insurance quotes here if you would like to start shopping around for a single combined insurance policy that would cover you, your spouse and your vehicles altogether.

RELATED Q&A

1 Responses to "My wife and I got married recently. We both have separate cars and separate insurance companies. We also have listed each other as excluded in our respective policies. Does that mean my insurance will not cover me if I drive her car and vice versa?"